


The Glass Castle

by deaths



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deaths/pseuds/deaths
Summary: He could stop now. He has more on her than they ever needed. He could sic Tseng and the rest of them on her. He could, but he doesn’t, and once a week he finds himself in the haven of Seventh Heaven.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Rufus Shinra
Comments: 35
Kudos: 81





	The Glass Castle

**Author's Note:**

> rufus “tfw no gf” shinra
> 
> concrit welcome!

“If I can be blunt, sir,” he says, “I can’t understand why you won’t let us handle it.”

Rufus doesn’t look up from the spread of papers littered across his desk. “It’s not a matter of trust, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Not at all.”

“Then I fail to see the issue.”

He still doesn’t look up, but he imagines that Tseng is doing the equivalent of wringing his hands with his eyes.

“At the risk of sounding impudent, it’s difficult to see how someone so high-profile could accomplish anything involving espionage.”

Typical Tseng, thinking inside the box and no further. He looks up at him without lifting his head.

“Ah, so that’s where the misunderstanding comes from. It’s not espionage.”

He tenses. “A show of force would have unintended consequences.”

“You don’t need violence. They’re like bleeding wounds, Tseng.” The click of his fountain pen punctuates his words. “Apply some pressure and they stop.”

* * *

His most pedestrian fit is still leagues above the most refined sartorial styles of the slums. He has no objections to being recognized, but anything too soigné would paint targets on his back in a den of wolves. There’s a time and a place for opulence.

Sector 7 brims with dirt and decay. The pungent smell of metal and oil presses down on his head like a compactor and blunts his senses as soon as he steps off the train and onto the platform. He hasn’t been down here in years. Under normal circumstances, he’d like to keep it that way. The Turks can do the dirty work—literally—but the storm brewing in Seventh Heaven has grown to be more than a mere thorn in their sides. If they’re going to devote so much of their time and resources to Shinra, he’s obliged to return the favor.

He starts having second thoughts when he finally comes upon the pitiable establishment. Uneven wood planks jut out from the sides like broken bones and dark brown paint peels off the door in thick curls. When he ascends the splintered stairs and walks through the door, the interior isn’t much better.

Tifa Lockhart. A germinating subversive with a genial smile. She tends the bar—at least for tonight. Her friends are nowhere to be seen. A few heads turn and a susurrus of hushed voices sweeps across the handful of patrons. They shrink. He approaches the bar and the stark horror that crosses her features before she remembers herself delights him enough to redeem the effort of this endeavor.

He slides onto a stool and studies her face. She gathers herself. She’s pretty but has rurality written all over her.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, sir?” she asks. The words are sickeningly sweet—a sugarcoated cyanide pill.

Opacity comes to him naturally, but the razor thin balance that translucency requires lies on the edge of his comfort zone. He runs his fingers along the smooth counter. The lacquer must be recent. “I had business in the area.”

Her voice strains with the limits of her self-control. “I have a hard time seeing why you’d want to stick around here any longer than you have to, Mr. Shinra.”

 _You’re full of shit._ He almost wishes she had said it.

“If I have somewhere else to be, I’m unaware of it.”

A thin sheen of sweat shines on her forehead. “Can I get you a drink?”

“A death in the afternoon. How much?”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Seventeen, but...are you sure?”

“I’m not a lightweight.” He holds a twenty gil coin between his fingers. “I like to get my money’s worth.”

Miss Lockhart is wholly unimpressed even as she snatches the coin from his grasp and stuffs it into the pouch clipped to her hip. She reaches above the bar where glasses hang upside down and produces a flute; she reaches below and finds the jigger.

Her fingertips skim across the row of cheap rums and she stops at the end, reaching back for the singular bottle of absinthe they appear to have. She wraps her gloved fist around the neck of Mideel Morning and pours into the jigger, content to let their conversation fizzle out.

“Your accent. You’re from...?”

She shakes her head, bristling. “Nowhere important.”

“Rocket Town?”

“Nope. Close, though.”

“Corel, then.”

She shakes her head again, but a smile that _could_ be construed as amused spreads across her glossy lips.

“I give up.”

“Like I said, it’s nowhere important.”

Nibelheim. He’s not about to kick the hornet’s nest just yet by suggesting as much.

She pours the finished product into a tasteful martini glass and garnishes with a slice of lime. She stares a moment too long, no doubt interpreting the pale green hue as a message. The effervescence tingles against his lips.

She flits from customer to customer, toting out her genuine smile rather than the acerbic grin of amusement that she reserved just for him. Several pairs of eyes burn holes in his back. She resists the urge to look over at him. The sword of Damocles dangles precariously from an invisible precipice. Good. Let her be afraid.

He drains the glass and the death in the afternoon seeps into his veins, smudging the edges of his periphery like strokes of oil paints. He likes to get his money’s worth and he got it.

When she strides over to him, she wrings her hands. “Can I get you another?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Apply pressure to a wound and it stops bleeding. He reaches over the counter and wraps a gloved hand around her shoulder, coaxing her down close. She doesn’t gasp. She knows better than to cause a scene.

“You know why I’m here,” he whispers into the shell of her ear. He feels bumps on the bare skin of her shoulder. “You and your friends aren’t subtle.”

She swallows. Her voice trembles. “I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” He releases his grip on her shoulder and she rushes backward until her back brushes against the bottles lining the wall. He slides a folded fifty gil note onto the bar. “Don’t spend it all in one place, Miss Lockhart.”

* * *

“They laid low for a couple of weeks, but they’ve resumed active recruitment efforts.”

The noon light overwhelms the office and Tseng takes a dainty bite of pho. The man never gets through a whole meal in one sitting.

Rufus waves his chopsticks dismissively. “I’ll take care of it.”

He puts his spoon down. “You’re going to regret these half-measures.”

“You never let me enjoy myself,” he laments.

“I’m not seeing what’s so enjoyable about insurrection.”

“You’re taking them too seriously.”

Tseng stirs the broth and crosses one leg over the other.

“I hope you’re right about that, sir,” he says, “for your sake.”

* * *

“More business?”

She folds her arms across her chest and a grimace mars her face. He has to admire her devotion to her cause. He slides onto the barstool and balances a coin on his fingertip.

“Are you going to tell me to leave, Miss Lockhart? You can’t make me do that.” He gestures to the door. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Make yourself at home,” she says with a serrated scowl, moving to prepare someone else’s drink.

“You made me think there was going to be a bigger fight than that.”

“Follow the same rules as everyone else, I’ll treat you like everyone else.” Tifa tips a bottle forward and ruby red grenadine pours forth from the spout. She doesn’t break eye contact. “Unless that’s not what you want?”

“I don’t need special treatment from you.”

“Good.” She sticks a stirrer in the cup. “Can I get you a drink or would you rather take in the scenery?”

Rufus rolls the coin around in his palm. “A Sazerac.”

“I’m starting to think that you have a death wish, Mr. Shinra.”

“You’d like that, I’m sure.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “That’s a rude assumption.”

Tifa turns on her heel before he has the opportunity to retort and delivers the previous drink to a customer. She strides over and plucks the cheapest bottle of bourbon from the end of the line. He rolls the coin back and forth on the counter. If weak whiskey is the steepest price of making enemies, he’ll take it.

She slides the Sazerac in front of him. The absinthe imbues the whiskey with a golden hue. She holds her hand out.

“Hasty,” he says, sliding the coin into the palm of her hand. The tips of her fingers are warm, rough to the touch.

“I’m sure this is a few notches below the dives up where you live,” she says sweetly.

Rufus drains the glass in a single motion. When the alcohol is this cheap, it’s a means to an end. “Don’t be so coy.”

She grips the bar with both hands and grits her teeth. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you and your friends to quit the rebel act,” he says, “before things have to get messy.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

Indignation roils about her like billowing clouds and the heat complements the lingering burn of the whiskey.

“I think you do, Miss Lockhart.” He leans forward. “I think you know a lot.”

She wasn’t made for this. Her heart is tattooed on her sleeve and everywhere else. She scratches the curve of her neck and bites her lip. His nails dig into the lacquer.

His eyes dart over to the lushes nursing their drinks. Hate is a palpable thing. A negative charge in the air raises the hairs on his arms.

“You’re a popular woman. I’d hate to take you away from the people here.”

He flicks a fifty gil note onto the bar.

“For the hospitality.”

* * *

She perceives him as more of a nuisance than a threat. This has all backfired on him, just as Tseng warned it would. Unlike Tseng, however, he’s lacking in his ability to abstain from fruitless endeavors. It’s a hard-baked flaw in his genetics.

So he keeps going. He could have her taken away and just be done with it, but she’s too damn ensconced in this community, too beloved and revered. She’s not worth the civil unrest just yet.

She tolerates his existence. He wonders how her partners feel about that.

Tonight it’s straight absinthe, diluted and on the rocks. She gives the same skeptical look every time he asks for it. At least fifteen gil absinthe tastes the same as one hundred and fifty gil absinthe. Revolting by design.

“When did you come into this place?”

A shot glass clinks against a flute as Tifa dumps it into the sink. “A couple years ago. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s my pride and joy.”

He leans back. “And you’re happy in a place like this.”

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“You don’t know anything different.”

“I don’t want to,” she says fiercely.

She’s too earnest for her own good. She could supply lies for everything he asks of her but she offers pure, potent truth.

“The facts of life are the same, no matter who you are or where you go,” she continues, face twisting as though she ate something sharp and bitter.

“And what are the facts of life?”

“You know. Falling in love, getting your heart broken.” She holds still. “Death.”

She throws the rag down onto the counter. He tracks her as she marches into the backroom. The triteness of it all nauseates him.

Someone flicks open a lighter and he takes a pensive sip of absinthe. After some thought, he’d beg to differ. Love and death taste different at the top.

Probably, anyway.

* * *

The original objective of this undertaking has receded into the mist, vaguely present yet hardly visible. It’s become more about how far Rufus can push her, how much she can take before she relents, how the surrender will manifest. She can only regard him as a pest for so long.

He could stop now. He has more on her than they ever needed. He could sic Tseng and the rest of them on her. He could, but he doesn’t, and once a week he finds himself in the haven of Seventh Heaven. He indulges in libations sporadically before stopping altogether. The memory of their conversation never seems vivid after a night of drinking.

He could stop and probably should. She’s collecting on him as much as he is on her. She assuredly scurries back to her confrères, eager to reveal what little information Rufus Shinra drip-fed her that night. The enthusiasm would explain why she hangs on to his every word.

He could stop but he doesn’t. The tectonic plates beneath them shift until they’re far removed from where they started. It’s always things that are of no use to him but things that he documents to exhaustion nonetheless. She takes her tea plain and she’s allergic to nail polish. A raised white scar in the shape of a crater sometimes peeks above her bra when her back is turned to him. He doesn’t resent the requisite reciprocation as much as he should. She makes his tea with one spoonful of cream and never forgets.

He starts to understand why she’s so adored. Honest to a fault, but never forthcoming. The fountain of her kindness flows just as freely for him as it does for the most destitute among them, regardless of her principles. Beautiful—a fact he deliberately buried and banished to the recess of his consciousness from the beginning.

He walks in one night and she looks up from what she’s doing. Tonight—tonight, for the first time—he stares down the barrel of her traitorous smile.

The desire to play with fire is mutual.

* * *

She doesn’t surrender and it’s his fault. After the first two or three times, he should’ve had the Turks toss the lot of them in jail. He can’t think too hard about why he didn’t opt for that.

It’s the cusp of closing time and a man in dirt-stained overalls hobbles over to the opposite end of the counter from where Rufus sits. He fishes coins out of his pockets and counts them with a shaky hand, his salt-and-pepper mustache trembling over his lip in a way that reminds him too much of his father. He turns his gaze toward Rufus but when he opens his mouth to speak, he addresses her.

“Meanin’ to ask you why this son of a bitch keeps botherin’ you,” he says.

“Don’t worry. I would’ve kicked him out just like everyone else if he were bothering me.” She can never sell a lie, but the man buys it wholesale.

“Has no business here...no business anywhere...”

She reaches over the bar and places a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Mr. Orin, everyone’s got a place here as long as they follow the rules.”

The man mumbles something under his breath but his muscles relax under her touch. He nods and salutes her before limping out of the bar.

“Have a good night!” she calls out.

“How benevolent of you,” Rufus says after the door stops swinging.

She stiffens. “You’re human too.”

It’s a truncated statement, rife with silent conditions.

“Some people would disagree.”

She tilts her head. “Would _you_?”

A deep and unyielding discomfort takes root in his atria. Perhaps her hate simmers beneath the surface; perhaps he’s playing into her hand. He chooses his words carefully.

“I’m sure I have my foibles.”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“I don’t usually find myself in a position where I have to think about all my shortcomings.”

“That’s not a good thing,” she mutters, reaching under the counter to retrieve a fresh bottle of coffee liqueur to replace the empty one with a faded label.

“I don’t know when to give up.” He locks on to the back of her thighs. “Does that satisfy you?”

Tifa stands back up. “That’s just stating the obvious, but I guess I gotta give you credit for admitting it. You’re lucky I wasn’t recording that.”

She retrieves a rag and starts wiping down the back counter. Her arm moves in wide arcs, her toned biceps flexing and relaxing. Every move is an implicit invitation. His leg twitches. She turns back around and approaches him.

“I was thinking about it. Flaws aren’t the only thing that make someone human, you know.”

It’s past closing and she never has qualms about ejecting him from the premises. He waits for it and it doesn’t come. She folds her arms together and leans forward. The minor thrill of it sends a nerve-tingling frisson down his spine.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “What keeps you up at night?”

Rufus doesn’t respond right away. She waits, patient as a saint. She’s looking for ammunition.

“You first.”

“A lot of stuff I used to be scared of...well, it’s already happened. What’s left, then?” She shrugs. “Cockroaches, probably.”

He swallows a laugh and she frowns.

“It’s not funny,” she says. “Your family was responsible for everything.”

His stomach churns. He’s the one that backs people into corners. “Don’t act like your path isn’t also paved with blood.”

“That’s a poetic way of putting it.” She feigns indifference and juts her chin out. “Your turn now.”

“Come closer and I’ll tell you.”

Tifa hesitates and looks at him in the way one might look at quicksand or a bear trap. Distress. The safeguards of survival instincts should keep her away, but she clasps her hands together and indulges him.

Her face hovers inches away from his. Her hair brushes against his wrist.

“I hate to fail,” he admits.

She sighs, unsatisfied. “That’s a real cop-out.”

“I answered the question.”

“Who likes to fail?”

“Fair enough,” he concedes, voice hoarse.

“It would be nice if you didn’t have so much riding on your shoulders, wouldn’t it?”

He pauses. “You don’t want to hear the answer to that.”

She vacillates between a smile and a scowl.

“You’re probably right. What else...” She looks away, contemplating, before meeting his gaze again. “There has to be something you hold dear. You know—something you love.”

All the little brown flecks in her eyes are like sunspots in a solar flare. The air is warm—the minutes slow. Her lips part and the gloss catches the light. He can hear and feel her soft breaths, cool and minty against his skin. Something lives and breathes in the narrow space between them. An ache blossoms deep in his bones like catchfly in the night.

His throat dries up. “I don’t know yet.”

Is it pity, despair, or a blend of both in her eyes?

“Yet,” she whispers. “I really do hate you, but...”

Her reputation precedes her and he was never foolish enough to try his luck, but the plates beneath them have shifted so far that they might as well be out to sea. He lifts his hand and twists a tress of her hair around his finger. A flush glows on her cheeks and extends all the way up to the helices of her ears.

“You would’ve done something by now.”

Her fingers curl around his wrist. They linger there, the tips running along the back of his hand. He wants something so much it hurts and he doesn’t know what it is. Not yet.

“I would have.” Her grip tightens. Far out to sea, and he can only tread water so long. “I should have.”

* * *

Night isn’t the refuge it once was.

There is no more objective. There is no ruse or artifice. There never was. After tedious days of fielding inane questions and flipping through tomes of reports and operations plans, fleeting flickers of doubt cross his mind. An urge to run to her, where time and duty don’t exist, grips him and wrings every drop of good judgment from his veins.

This room is too big for one person. It’s too cold to sleep. The sheets are pure starch against his bare skin. He throws them off. He shivers, but the pillowcase is damp with sweat. She asked him what he feared and what he held dear, but she never asked what he wanted.

The bedroom is already pitch black, but he throws an arm over his face anyway. 

He asked for this and it’s a miserable affair. He tries to conjure her, but imagination will never suffice. She must be sleeping soundly at this hour—miles below, a world away. Maybe she’s tossing and turning, grappling with desire and decimation, hating the lacuna between what they are and who they are.

It’s an exercise in futility. He gets up and walks over to the window, drawing the curtain by a sliver. Midgar stares back—the Midgar that matters. 

There are more important things.

The room is too big and the air is too cold.

There are more important things.

* * *

The next time he sees her, he breaks his self-imposed rule and asks for one shot after another. Liquid courage, as they say, but it’s not courage he needs.

He needs to know.

She notices something and cradles the next shot of vodka between both hands.

“This is a change,” she says neutrally, inviting his elaboration.

“I’ll take you home.” When she fumbles the shot glass and spills vodka all over herself, he adds, “ _Your_ home.”

Her expression cycles between confusion, surprise, and consternation.

“You’re drunk!”

“I’m not a lightweight, Tifa.”

She pauses, still holding the glass on its side. A drop of vodka gathers at the side and splashes on the floor. She shakes her head before walking to the other end of the bar to close out patrons’ tabs.

After the last of them have departed and she’s completed her nightly ritual, she ushers him out into the humid night.

“Let me guess. This is all a ploy to kidnap me,” she intones.

“I would’ve already done that by now.”

She raises a brow. “Are you sure this isn’t beneath you?”

“It is,” he says blithely, “but that doesn’t matter if it’s something I want.”

If looks could kill, he’d be bleeding out on the stairs. She locks up for the night. They both know she’ll be returning here in an hour or so. She slips the keys into her pocket and gestures toward the path leading to a crowded corridor of stalls and vendors.

“Right past there. Just a couple minutes away.”

He follows her down the muddy boulevard. Patchwork moonlight illuminates the way where the otherwise omnipresent glow of mako doesn’t. She walks into a black puddle and the ripples distort the reflection of the moon. The berth between their lives grows wider with every step. This is the cost of progress; the price of power. Maybe that’s why she’s still so hellbent on overthrowing the throne.

She comes to a stop in front of a two-story row of apartments. She bounds up the steps and stops in front of the middle apartment.

“Right here,” she says.

She makes no move to retire for the night and he makes no move to descend the staircase. From up here, he can see the sprawl of rooftops and glimpses of the world beyond the barrier.

It’s not as beautiful as the view from the upper plates—it never will be. There is nothing beautiful about this place. The sight still paints itself on the canvas of his memory in indelible inks. The dense blue of the midnight sky, the pale yellow shining from people’s windows as they settle in for the night. The delicate scarlet of her eyes and the green aura engulfing them both.

“You never fooled me. Not even from the start.”

She doesn’t look angry, but he’s learned that her eyes are the deceptive cover of a book whose pages tell a very different story.

“But that stopped being the point a long time ago, right?” she continues.

When he doesn’t say anything, her eyebrows knit together in distress. It’s a lesson in how swiftly he can acquiesce.

“It did,” he says slowly.

She sighs. Looks away, grips her arm. “It wasn’t just me, then.”

The confession is so steeped in grief that it fails to relieve him. He braces for impact.

“I can’t. No matter what. Even if you still come, I can’t.”

He imagined that it would hurt more, cut deeper. Maybe it does, in the way that pain comes after the shock of losing a limb subsides.

“And why is that?”

“I know what you are,” she says, “and you know what I am. Nothing will change that.”

She blinks and her eyes glisten in the cruel glow of the world above.

“I know someone good lives in there, deep down. Someone who wants to make things right. If only something could...”

 _Something could,_ he wants to scream. She could forfeit her ideals and leave her dead-end life and have every wish and whim granted before she could think to make it. He could surrender his name, his title, his everything. They could flee their bloody paths and escape to the ends of the planet where no soul would dare hope to find them, and he’d kill those who would try.

Something could, but nothing will.

Rage erupts in his chest like blistering lava, scattering searing streaks of fire across his nerves. He could slam her to the ground and have Turks all over her before she could even blink. He could lock her away and the sun would fade to a foreign memory after decades of darkness. He could have her killed with any sordid method his heart desires and burn her filthy, festering abscess of a gin mill into a jar’s worth of ash.

He could, but he won’t.

The rage cools and solidifies into something for which he has no name.

“You really don’t have anything to say?” she asks quietly.

“No.” The cool metal of the twenty gil coin grounds him. It stings to face her. “Nothing important.”

“Maybe that’s for the best.” Her voice quivers.

She turns away from the railing and unlocks the front door.

“Good night, Rufus,” she whispers. She utters his name as though he were a common man, a neighbor, and it doesn’t echo like he wishes it would.

Tifa shuts the door and the click of the lock punctuates the sentence.

He doesn’t waste time. Down the stairs, down to the ground. The sound of heels against steel harmonize with the hum of machinery. He wades into the grime and grit of the night and it clings to him, creeping into his lungs and clogging his trachea.

His gait slows. The train station is only ten minutes away, but he can’t remember the last time his muscles felt this tattered. He leans against a derelict building and looks beyond the barrier and into the twinkling twilight sky. The light typically smothers the sight of any celestial bodies. Tonight, the cosmos shimmer like little shards of glass—and they cut just as deep.

* * *

Some months later, they need a scapegoat and she and her friend are in the right place at the right time. The guards drag them away toward the antechamber. He wonders if she tried to telegraph one last message as his back was turned to her. He’ll never know.

“You’re not going to watch, sir? This was your idea,” Scarlet says.

“Just get it over with. Don’t drag it out.”

Scarlet retreats in silence. He stares out the dashboard of the deck, out onto the ocean of orange clouds.

Love and death taste different at the top.


End file.
